Careers

We’re Hiring!

We’re building a team of scientists and specialists to drive the next wave of drug discovery. We’re looking for great people who want to do work that makes a real difference. At Sharp Edge Labs, our technology is used in the hunt for cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cystic Fibrosis and Gaucher’s disease. If you want to apply your technical know-how to contribute to solutions for those suffering from these diseases and many others, then please check out these postings, and submit your resume. You could be just the person we’re looking for.

Sharp Edge Labs is located in Pittsburgh’s South Side, and is near to Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. We’re a venture-backed startup company, and we’re part of Pittsburgh’s growing biotech/life sciences community.

Working at Sharp Edge Labs means being exposed to new science on a regular basis, and developing cures for diseases with serious unmet medical need. We’re too small to have bureaucracy, and we look to each member of the team to ask the tough questions, and provide the key insights. And we rely on each other for support, teaching, assistance and advice.

We’re also very good at what we do. Attention to detail matters, and we take pride in being able to run assays that others think are “just too hard.” How many times do we notice “something funny” in the data that leads to real insight? It happens all the time. As Isaac Asimov said “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka! but ‘That’s funny…’ We totally get that. We also love it when we get a z-prime of 0.7 from a cellular assay (geeky? yes).

We use the latest technology, whether it’s cloud-based informatics, or the latest gene editing method. We like to keep on top of our game.

We’re a small, highly matrixed team: while you will have a supervisor, they’re there more to provide support, than to tell you precisely what to do (that’s why we hired you!).

We take diversity seriously, because a broader group of minds can tackle deeper and more difficult problems (I guess the one way we’re not diverse, is that all of our people are smart, and naturally curious).

Finally, we keep things in perspective. We work hard, and sometimes long hours against tight deadlines, but we know that down-time and family-time are important. We want your mind working on the toughest problems, and you can’t do that if other aspects of your life have you stressed out.

Some fun-facts:

Yes the Breaking Bad question on the application is for real. Most of us at the company have binge-watched the entire series. (Having watched the entire series of Fargo would be an acceptable substitute).

The only way to get in real trouble at Sharp Edge is to draw conclusions from data that’s not been subjected to significance analysis. Few things make us frown like interpreting an n of one. It’s more like a grimace, actually, a grimace of pain deep in the soul.

Southside Pittsburgh is home to numerous restaurants within walking distance of the lab, as well as shopping at the Southside Works. It’s also home to the highest concentration of bars and nightclubs in the region (you can make of that what you like).

Alan Waggoner and Marcel Bruchez hatched the idea for the company at Sharp Edge Beer Emporium (which has one of the largest collections of Belgian beer on tap in the entire country). Thus the name….(you can also make of that what you like…)

We hate stock photos, which is why you won’t see someone in a lab-coat gazing meaningfully into a test tube filled with colored water on the site. The picture on the front page was taken in the lab, it’s of just-washed glassware.

We are working on the most important unmet needs in the pharma and biotech industry. It sounds like a stock thing to say, but in our case it’s true. The work we do will make a real difference. That’s why we care so much, work so hard, and feel so good at the end of the day (though some days can be a challenge if you live on the other side of a tunnel (Pittsburghers will know what that means)).

Monogenic DiseasesCaused by a single gene alteration, monogenic diseases represent an area of high unmet need, and also of great therapeutic opportunity.